By now, you should have assigned and graded several informal assessments. How have you been using the results of these assessments to improve how you teach and what students learn? What strategies has your CT suggested for providing students with guidance before they do the assignment to improve their performance? What about after the assignment?\
Informal assessments are content and performance driven. Therefore, my informal assessments used match the purpose of assessing. These inform my instruction and give me a good idea of where my students are at in the class. It helps me to see if students are falling behind or not understanding the materials. I have informal assessments in the forms of lab activities and scientific writing. I use a general rubric to determine students’ abilities and levels of understanding. My rubrics are based upon the format that I expect and the level of explanation that the students should be achieving. If students are not grasping the main ideas in their writing, I need to determine one of two things: whether that student was being lazy and didn’t either pay attention to the activity or put effort into completing it or if that student doesn’t understand the material. I usually can determine this by the amount of effort put into the lab sheets and writing. If I feel the student doesn’t understand it, I will talk with them separately and have them come after school to address their misconceptions. If several students are not understanding the concepts, I will address the entire class and re-teach.
Informal assessments are content and performance driven. Therefore, my informal assessments used match the purpose of assessing. These inform my instruction and give me a good idea of where my students are at in the class. It helps me to see if students are falling behind or not understanding the materials. I have informal assessments in the forms of lab activities and scientific writing. I use a general rubric to determine students’ abilities and levels of understanding. My rubrics are based upon the format that I expect and the level of explanation that the students should be achieving. If students are not grasping the main ideas in their writing, I need to determine one of two things: whether that student was being lazy and didn’t either pay attention to the activity or put effort into completing it or if that student doesn’t understand the material. I usually can determine this by the amount of effort put into the lab sheets and writing. If I feel the student doesn’t understand it, I will talk with them separately and have them come after school to address their misconceptions. If several students are not understanding the concepts, I will address the entire class and re-teach.